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Two Kinds of Power
Just about anyone who ponders the perils we presently face as a civilization will eventually trace the roots of the crisis to the fact that modern people—Americans in particular—are born into a cult of consumerism. It is inherited servitude to an addiction that, so far, has seemed to grow more entrenched in every new generation. And we intuitively know it is killing us (along with a great many helpless others).
That’s why, if you have read the many books, blogs, articles, and opinion pieces written about the unsustainability of our way of life, you have certainly run across this bit of “what-you-can-do-about-it” advice: Stop buying.
That’s why, if you have read the many books, blogs, articles, and opinion pieces written about the unsustainability of our way of life, you have certainly run across this bit of “what-you-can-do-about-it” advice: Stop buying.
We have to stop wanting.
This is a radical thought that marketers spend billions of dollars every year to keep you from thinking—to keep you from knowing you even can think it.
Many people will cry foul about now. “Stop wanting? We are human beings. You might as well tell us to stop breathing.“ Very well, let’s rephrase: Stop wanting things that are not real. Better still—train yourself to want something new and better.
Excerpts from (a good, quick read) by Alan Wartes, found at: http://www.alanraywartes.com/jb-journals.html
This is a radical thought that marketers spend billions of dollars every year to keep you from thinking—to keep you from knowing you even can think it.
Many people will cry foul about now. “Stop wanting? We are human beings. You might as well tell us to stop breathing.“ Very well, let’s rephrase: Stop wanting things that are not real. Better still—train yourself to want something new and better.
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And, sadly on a related note, the Situationist App will continue to be unavailable:
[center]SITUATIONIST: Situation status: banned[/center]
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A spectre is haunting Apple: the spectre of situationists. And so it is that the Cupertino giant has been compelled to censor and to delete the Situationist app from its virtual store. The post-Marxist and anarchic philosophy lead by the intellectual Guy Debord was prepared to revive on the screen of your iPhone. There is no better tool, as paradoxical as it can be, to recreate that social defiance, don’t you think?
Differences aside –the commotion caused by The Society of the Spectacle or the May '68 revolts happened a long time ago–, the world in which we are living now seems to have taken to the streets to wave the flag of anti-capitalism. The ways have changed –homo consumus is now a reality–, but the foundations are still the same. Read Avertissement aux écoliers et lycéens by Raoul Vaneigem, another situationist champion, and you will understand the importance that the movement had, beyond graffiti, flirtations with surrealism or the usual happenings.
Today, in the demonstrations against the European crisis and the bombardment of social spending cuts, high-tech smartphones are raised to take a picture or type the 140 characters de rigueur, but the message is still the same: break the market rules and transform today’s disenchantment in indignation. Millions of people get out on the streets and in the end one question seems to be repeated: now what? The censored app could be an option, maybe the most “politically incorrect”. What we know for sure is that it aimed to lay on the table the necessary debate on the eternal showdown between ideological unrest and new technologies.
The idea of this original app, inspired in the Situationist International founded in 1957, was very simple: break the chains of consumerism and false appearances (think of advertising) and create unique and group situations to transform the only thing that can be transformed: the present. From “Write the first thing that comes to mind” or “Hug me for 5 seconds exactly” to “Ask me what I think of the war” or “Destroy the nearest TV”, the app included a long list of all kinds of situations, with only one purpose: to knock down the walls of prevailing logic.
(From May 2012) http://visualmaniac.com/visualmag/tech/situationist-situation-status-banned-3414#.UoF_hCeSHao
Differences aside –the commotion caused by The Society of the Spectacle or the May '68 revolts happened a long time ago–, the world in which we are living now seems to have taken to the streets to wave the flag of anti-capitalism. The ways have changed –homo consumus is now a reality–, but the foundations are still the same. Read Avertissement aux écoliers et lycéens by Raoul Vaneigem, another situationist champion, and you will understand the importance that the movement had, beyond graffiti, flirtations with surrealism or the usual happenings.
Today, in the demonstrations against the European crisis and the bombardment of social spending cuts, high-tech smartphones are raised to take a picture or type the 140 characters de rigueur, but the message is still the same: break the market rules and transform today’s disenchantment in indignation. Millions of people get out on the streets and in the end one question seems to be repeated: now what? The censored app could be an option, maybe the most “politically incorrect”. What we know for sure is that it aimed to lay on the table the necessary debate on the eternal showdown between ideological unrest and new technologies.
The idea of this original app, inspired in the Situationist International founded in 1957, was very simple: break the chains of consumerism and false appearances (think of advertising) and create unique and group situations to transform the only thing that can be transformed: the present. From “Write the first thing that comes to mind” or “Hug me for 5 seconds exactly” to “Ask me what I think of the war” or “Destroy the nearest TV”, the app included a long list of all kinds of situations, with only one purpose: to knock down the walls of prevailing logic.
